


Sonnets for the Cradle

by nephilisms (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Episode: s12e10 Lily Sunder Has Some Regrets, Season/Series 12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2018-09-30 13:06:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10163651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/nephilisms
Summary: “I tried—I tried the parent thing with, you know.” With Lisa and Ben, but even now, Dean can’t really talk about them, not even to Cas,especiallynot to Cas. “It’s not for me. Doesn’t matter if I retire and have the time to look after a kid. There’s no getting out. Something always comes after you, and I’m not putting another kid through that.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late to the Lily Sunder party, I know.

Dean takes Cas out for breakfast.

Okay, correction: Dean mostly takes _himself_ out for breakfast. Dean knows that ordering food for Cas is kind of a waste, but stuffing his face in front of someone who’s going without has always made Dean feel like a jackass. So, Dean kicks at Cas’ ankles under the table until he orders a toasted bagel, plain, and glares at Dean while Dean smiles at the waitress and asks for what turns out to be a truly disappointing stack of double-decker pancakes.  

Cas, who doesn’t understand that they’re supposed to be eating in stilted post-makeup silence, and who consistently overestimates the average human’s ability to hold intelligent conversation before ten a.m., says, “I’m…surprised.”

Dean contemplates the topmost pancake’s edible smiley face. It’s got a stingy line of whipped cream for a mouth and two wilted strawberries for eyes. Nothing about it looks promising.

Cas clears his throat, and Dean mostly relents because he knows that Cas _won’t_.

“Surprised?” Dean jiggles his fork between his fingers, wondering if the strawberries, at least, are worth it. “’Bout what?”

“I anticipated a fight on your part,” Cas says, “when I gave Lily Sunder my blessing to return and confront me should she find herself dissatisfied with the degree of closure she received.”

Right. Because Cas is Cas, and Dean’s a trigger-happy mud monkey.

“Oh, I’m gonna fight it, all right.” Dean impales one of the strawberries on the tines of his fork and feels the underripe red flesh give after a token resistance. He doesn’t bring it to his mouth, though. “Lily comes poking around looking to get even with you, I’ll show her why she should’a been happy with the closure she got.”

“I grieve Benjamin’s loss. I even mourn Mirabel and Ishim.” Cas slices his bagel in half but doesn’t even pretend to nibble on it, leaving it open and barefaced on his plate. “And although I resent Lily for slaying my friends, I believe her revenge justified.”

Dean gets it. Hell, he feels sorry for Benjamin. Less so for Mirabel, with the way she talked down to Cas, and Ishim—Dean’s only regret on the Ishim front is that he didn’t get to kill the fucker slow.  

“Sure, she’s justified,” Dean agrees with Cas, easy. He drops his fork onto his plate, still stuck through the uneaten strawberry. “And, sure, you fucked up by not questioning Ishim’s orders. But Lily? Is not touching you, and I don’t care about how _justified_ she’d be if she tried.”

Cas blinks, once, eyelashes flirting with the curves of his cheekbones. “I was in the wrong, Dean.”

“Yup, you were. Don’t care.” Maybe he’ll have better luck with Cas’ bagel. “You gonna eat that?”

Cas wordlessly exchanges their plates, and Dean sets to smothering his appropriated bagel in cream cheese.

“I thought you would empathize with her.” Cas slides the maimed strawberry off the fork and returns it to its pancake, restoring the smiley face. “After all, you’re both humans who’ve lost loved ones to supernatural forces.”  

Dean shears off a hunk of bagel with his teeth, chews and swallows before admitting, “If she were gunning for literally anyone else? Yeah, I’d’ve probably left her to it, but you’re not just any dick with wings, Cas, and she’s not getting near you. End of.” Even the bagels around here are mediocre. Dean’s officially putting this diner on the _Only If Starving_ list. “Man, what’s with the nephilim shit lately, anyway? First Kelly, now Lily.”

Except Lily’s angel baby was a false alarm, and Kelly Kline’s incubating the real deal. Point is, up till recently, Dean never heard about the bouncing bundles of angel spawn outside of a throwaway verse in Genesis, and now they’re popping up all over the place.

“It’s become a distressingly frequent theme of late, yes.” Cas tilts his head. “Is there something wrong with the food?”

“Not really.” Dean gives up on the bagel, thinking of how he hasn’t been able to keep down much of anything post-Great Escape, like six straight weeks of lukewarm juice boxes and something pretending to be bologna have permanently fucked his digestive tract. Which would suck ass, because food’s, like, his third favorite coping mechanism after sex and alcohol. “All that prison food fucked me up, I guess.”

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas says, and by now Dean’s so used to him being resentful and grumpy that seeing him soft and doleful makes his head spin and his stomach lurch.  

“Cas, shut up,” Dean groans. What he means is, _Don’t be sorry_ and _It’s not your fault_ , but he figures Cas’ Dean-to-Standard-English is good enough that he can pick up on the subtext.

Some little kid in the booth opposite from theirs starts up crying, probably cranky from getting dragged out of her cozy car seat by road-lagged parents. Her face is all scrunched up and red, and she’s smacking her dad’s silverware hard enough to cut herself. Every adult in the vicinity exchanges uncomfortable glances, comrades in wishing they were anywhere but here, and Dean honestly wants to deck them all. Some poor little kid’s crying hard enough to choke, and all they can think about is how embarrassing it all is and how relieved they are not to be her parents.

Dean tries to catch the kid’s eye, figuring that a round of silly faces might at least temporarily distract her from bringing the house down, but then a big blur of ugly coat blocks his line of sight. Cas, murmuring to the parents and skating his fingers over the fuzzy crown of their toddler’s head.

And the little girl shuts down just like that. Dean can’t see her face with Cas in the way, but he bets her eyes are wide and wet with awe. Dean can see her parents just fine, though, gets a gander at their unhinged jaws, and snickers into his fist.

“Look at you,” Dean marvels, grinning at Cas when he resumes his seat opposite Dean. “I’m pretty okay with kids, but you, Cas—you’re something else. Is it the mojo, or are you just that good?”

“It’s definitely the mojo,” Cas says, scrunching up his nose like he’s remembered something mildly unpleasant.

Dean drops a napkin on top of his bagel, deciding that he’s gonna flag the waitress down for the bill the next time she passes by. “Y’know, that magic touch of yours’d be real handy if you ever decided to make your own antichrist. Whaddya say, Cas? Any unholy spawn in our future?”

Cas says, “Please don’t,” and Dean laughs for a full minute, and he doesn't stop until his phone beeps at him. 

 

From: Sammy

Timestamp: 7:59 a.m.

You make it to the diner or did Cas finally snap and lock you in the trunk?

 

To: Sammy

Timestamp: 8:01 a.m.

Eat a whole ass.

 

From: Sammy

Timestamp: 8:02 a.m.

Glad you two made up.

 

Dean’s gonna change Sam’s contact name to the poop emoji and nothing else.

 

* * *

 

Cas shifts in the passenger seat and says, “Dean. Were you being facetious, or do you actually want a child?”  

And it’s just as well that Dean’s already put Baby in park, or else the way his hands reflexively jerk on the steering wheel would’ve sent her careening into Cas’ stolen truck, _Christ_.

“Man, is that your weird way of asking to fuck me in the backseat?” Dean twists the key free of the ignition, jittery from all the coffee he poured into his otherwise empty stomach. “Because if that’s what you want, you could’a just said so.”

Except, if Cas wanted to re-christen the bunker’s garage, he really _would have_ just said so.

Dean. Does not like where this is going.

“I am, of course, aware that we cannot create a biological child of our own.” Cas says this while looking earnestly into Dean’s face, and Dean wants to cringe. “Even if I’d chosen a different vessel, our children would be nephilim.”

“Dude, don’t talk about vessel hopping, okay? It’s weird. Besides.” Dean rubs his hand over Cas’ thigh, scratching his inseam. “I like this vessel just fine.”

“I know that raising a child would be difficult, given your lifestyle,” Cas goes on, ignoring Dean, “but have you considered adopt—”

“No.” Dean scoots across the front seat and swings a leg over Cas’ hips. “Nope.”

Cas places his hands on the backs of Dean’s thighs, and Dean wiggles until Cas obligingly lifts them to grope his ass. Better, but not great. Dean ducks down to kiss Cas’ pretty pink mouth, and that— _that’s_ moving along nicely toward great, now.  

“You’re using physical affection to derail this line of conversation,” Cas tells him.

Dean says, “You’re damn right I am,” and drops his weight onto Cas’ lap.

Dean can tell that Cas’ grumpy over having been cut off, but he’s also into what they’re doing, slipping his hands under Dean’s shirts and pressing his fingers against the small of Dean’s back, warm contact. Dean kisses Cas long and wet and suffocating, moaning low and filthy because he knows how it works Cas up. He fucks his hips against Cas’ belly, half-hard and drowsy. 

“Dean.” Cas grips Dean by the ears and pulls him off his mouth, trailing spit. “Dean. We should discuss this.” 

“Nothing to discuss,” Dean grumbles. He ducks down to fasten his teeth around Cas’ earlobe, tasting skin that’s as human as any other’s.

Cas clamps one hand around Dean’s shoulder and the other at his waist, maneuvering him like he weighs nothing, laying him out across Cas’ lap, boots knocking Baby’s driver side door.

Dean leans too far back to glare at Cas, bashes his skull against the window, and swears. Cas soothes the pain away with a cool sweep of grace, and Dean just glares harder.

“You love children, and I cannot give you children.” Cas circles his hand over Dean’s chunky belly in that way he likes to, although Dean would prefer it if he inched his hand just a bit lower, thanks. “I don’t want you to regret your decision to be with me.”

“Cas, it ain’t got nothing to do with you, all right?” Dean lifts his hips, petulant, and Cas obligingly scratches his nails over the bulge in Dean’s pants. “I tried—I tried the parent thing with, you know.” With Lisa and Ben, but even now, Dean can’t really talk about them, not even to Cas, _especially_ not to Cas. “It’s not for me. Doesn’t matter if I retire and have the time to look after a kid. There’s no getting out. Something always comes after you, and I’m not putting another kid through that.”

Once you get mixed up in this shit—whether you choose it because you’re a grieving parent and you want to get your mitts on some angel juju, or because you got pulled in by your family's legacy—there’s no getting out. Hell, look at Mom—even _death_ couldn’t pull her out.

Mom did her best to keep Sam and Dean out of this life, only to burn on a nursery ceiling so a yellow-eyed fucker could drag them into it. Lily watched her kid die because she fell in with the wrong stalker angel. Different means, same result.

Dean loves kids—Dean would love his kid as much as he ever loved Sammy, dammit—and that’s why he’ll never have one of his own.

Cas unbuckles Dean’s belt one handed, leaving the tail ends to dangle like leather tongues, careful of Dean’s dick when he parts his zipper. He licks his hand before putting it in Dean’s boxers and jacking him slow, and Dean flushes and squeezes his eyes shut because he can’t stand the look on Cas’ face: one part clinical detachment, one part awe. Guess that’s the standard look for angels when they give their human boyfriends quickie hand jobs.

“I understand your hesitance, Dean.” Cas’ fingers chafe Dean’s dick, spit a poor substitute for real lube, and Dean doesn’t even mind. “I’m sorry.”

Dean rubs his face against Cas’ jaw, against his stubble. “Baby, don’t be sorry. It ain’t that bad.”

“I suppose you’re right.” Cas forms a fist inside Dean’s boxers, tightening his grip on the base of Dean’s dick, and Dean chokes a little. “At least we have Claire.”

Dean chokes a little again, but for different, less fun reasons. “Don’t. Talk about Claire while you got your hand on my dick, _Christ_.”

“Have I ruined the mood?” Cas asks him, and Dean flails out with one hand to grip the door handle, squeezing hard enough to make it creak.

And yeah, maybe it messes Dean up some, the fact that he won’t ever have a kid of his own. But he thinks about what precious little family he’s got, and he watches Cas lick precome off his tapered fingers, and he cares a little less.


End file.
